How Infold Games fashioned an open world for Infinity Nikki

Infinity Nikki is simply a virtually glowing illustration of what video crippled graphics tin be.

The 5th successful a bid of dress-up titles from Infold Games, Infinity Nikki is besides the archetypal to clasp elements of RPG action-adventure. But alternatively of tracking down weapons and battling atrocious guys, this installment finds its wide-eyed heroine solving puzzles by collecting enchanted outfits recovered passim a bid of wondrous lands.

Infinity Nikki

• Available on: iPhone, iPad
• Based in: Singapore
• Awards: Apple Design Award victor for Visuals and Graphics (2025), App Store Awards Game of the Year finalist (2025), App Store Editors’ Choice

Download Infinity Nikki from the App Store >

The fashion-forward gameplay inactive remains, of course. Nikki’s formal sways and waves each measurement of the way, portion capes sparkle and drift successful the wind. Different outfits are imbued with antithetic abilities that let players to usher Nikki — and her feline companion, Momo — done clever puzzles. And from quaint cobblestone towns to distant mountains, each country of the game’s Miraland — brought to beingness with cutting-edge visuals — is awash successful beautifully realized lighting and effects from precocious shading techniques similar Global Illumination. (Executive shaper Kentaro Tominaga antecedently worked connected respective installments of the Legend of Zelda series.)

It’s a wonderland of texture, light, and animation — and the 2025 Apple Design Award winner for Visuals and Graphics. To find retired more, we caught up with Douhu, Infinity Nikki’s pb gameplay systems decorator for outfits; Ade, pb programmer; and Dodie, creation director.

Why did you determine to marque this 5th installment an open-world RPG?

Douhu: When we started reasoning astir this six years ago, we already knew it would beryllium an open-world game. So we asked ourselves: How bash we spell astir bringing Nikki into that space? And however bash we acceptable it isolated from different open-world games connected the market?

To marque these worlds arsenic immersive arsenic we can, we support an oculus connected each the details, each the time.

This is the archetypal Nikki crippled to see action-adventure elements and airy combat.

Douhu: Yes, but we knew that combat wouldn’t beryllium portion of the game’s halfway play. The Nikki bid has specified a defined style. We thought a batch astir however to support that.

How galore radical worked connected the visuals for this?

Douhu: Oh, it’s a immense squad — astir 800 people. It’s a amusive but a analyzable job. We person a batch of ocular pipelines each going astatine once: cutscenes, the NPC ecosystem, lighting, performance. The accumulation complexity is truthful high.

The payoff for that enactment seems to beryllium everywhere: The crippled is afloat of fabrics, sparkles, environments, and earthy elements.

Douhu: And we deliberation astir each of them. For instance, erstwhile Nikki runs up a formation of steps successful a cutscene, we don’t privation her to stamp her feet down. We privation her to determination lightly and elegantly. All the sounds you perceive are based connected real-world sounds, though we’ve added immoderate imaginativeness to them successful post-production editing. To marque these worlds arsenic immersive arsenic we can, we support an oculus connected each the details, each the time.

Nikki’s double-jump is particularly elegant; it’s astir similar a glider coming successful for the softest of landings.

Douhu: That’s due to the fact that we privation players to person plentifulness of clip to acquisition the world. Our halfway gameplay is based connected jumping, but it’s not a precise speedy motion. It’s slow, similar a micro-response for that circumstantial floating motion. And that’s due to the fact that we privation to fto players respire and admit each the details of Miraland.

What is Day 1 similar connected the visuals for thing similar this?

Douhu: Because this is our 5th crippled with Nikki, we already person the quality and doctrine built out, truthful those archetypal days are much astir sketching retired the caller satellite and its antithetic maps.

Ade: To start, we reconstruct the operation and carnal show of the fabrics successful the engine, based mostly connected reality. Then we’ll bash utmost evolutions connected the fabrics. We person truthful galore cloth categories successful our library, and a batch of those are practice from erstwhile titles. But we marque each kinds of adjustments, and adhd each kinds of effects to marque the crippled consciousness similar it’s beyond reality.

Douhu: We bash person a large closet successful our office! But we privation to stress that we’re not conscionable exporting existent fabrics oregon trying to recreate reality. We’re adding layers of fantasy. We adhd analyzable embroideries, much patterns, and glittering peculiar effects to picture a much whimsical, fantastic mentation of reality. That’s wherefore Nikki’s outfits look much gorgeous than they would successful existent life. Hopefully!

Could you prime an constituent successful the crippled and stock a small astir however it was brought to life?

Dodie: Color has ever been cardinal to our creation creation, truthful I’ll stock 2 examples from Version 2.0: the five-star outfit Behind Prayers and the determination called Snail Ranch.

The halfway plan conception of Behind Prayers is ”a confined divine maiden,” truthful that meant a maximal plan approach. The divine maiden longs for freedom, yet she’s draped successful dense layers of ornate garments and gemstones. These correspond some ineffable glory and the value of restraint: dazzling and radiant, yet undeniably burdensome.

We chose golden arsenic the superior colour to explicit sanctity and brilliance, and we introduced touches of greenish to interruption imaginable ocular monotony. We further embellished the outfit with a affluent array of multicolored gemstones and enhanced it with prismatic sparkle effects, allowing it to shimmer vividly — adjacent astatine night.

Snail Ranch, meanwhile, is the player’s archetypal destination successful Itzaland — the spot wherever Nikki archetypal encounters the Shroomlings and the snails.

The lighting successful this country is intentionally agleam and inviting. Sunlight filters done tremendous leaves, creating a lukewarm and relaxing atmosphere, portion adjacent tiny puddles on the way bespeak the heavy bluish of the sky. The country takes connected a fairytale quality, inviting players to judge and suffer themselves successful the land.

Talk astir your attack to creating these fabrics and outfits.

Ade: Infinity Nikki introduces a revolutionary worldly system. At the halfway is simply a re-engineered cloth algorithm that preserves the advantages of four-layer UV blending textures, portion requiring lone minimal parameter adjustments to accurately simulate a wide scope of materials, including the earthy coarseness of fabric and linen, the creaseless sheen of silk and satin, arsenic good arsenic the delicate tactile qualities of assorted velvets and flannel. The strategy besides provides heavy enactment for customized reflections and divers sparkle responses, making it casual to make distinctive highlights and dreamy glints, specified arsenic the unsocial interplay of gauze and silk successful the Fairytale Swan outfit.

Visual richness successful Infinity Nikki extends good beyond fabric. We developed a specialized jewelry worldly strategy utilizing precocious algorithms to simulate the brilliance of gemstones, including analyzable refraction, 3S airy transmission, and highly adaptable specular highlights, arsenic seen successful the pearls and diamonds of the Fairytale Swan outfit. Dynamic presumption has besides breached done erstwhile limitations. To enactment animated patterns successful high-end outfits specified arsenic Threads of Reunion, the squad developed an innovative solution to mitigate Unreal Engine 5’s interference from engine-native question blur connected UV animations. This enables crisp and vivid celestial question effects: 3 autarkic orbits let afloat customization of planetary shapes, angular velocities, and trajectories, layered with flowing asteroid belts and lunar signifier changes.

And however bash you attack carnal simulation?

Ade: We marque flexible usage of skeletal physics and Chaos Cloth to execute natural, expressive motion. Through proprietary skeletal concatenation algorithms and enhanced cloth solvers, the squad replaces costly and unstable accepted collision-based algorithms with much unchangeable and controllable constraint-based algorithms. Let’s instrumentality Nikki moving successful a escaped formal arsenic an example. We introduced a flexible and soft-driven constraint signifier during preprocessing, ensuring that adjacent nether melodramatic movements, the archetypal garment avoids clipping the body.

While pursuing carnal realism, the strategy besides preserves the intended creator silhouette of garments, peculiarly structured garments with petticoat. These outfits indispensable travel people similar fabric, portion maintaining behaviour accordant with their carnal construction. Our customized algorithms incorporated collision handling betwixt antithetic garment types and aggregate covering layers, enabling escaped outfit combinations without sacrificing stability. By cautiously balancing ocular effects and performance, we execute accordant results crossed aggregate platforms.

Keep reading

Developer stories research champion practices and philosophies from immoderate of the astir inventive developers successful the Apple community. In each story, we spell down the screens with developers, designers, and engineers to find retired however they brought their singular creations to life.

Browse each developer stories >